skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Imagine people throwing away furniture, crushing cars, and burning books because they can't be sold. This is value being destroyed.

It's "use value" being destroyed, not "economic value".

This is the reason why economies get a huge boost after a war: because stuff has to be bought again, infrastructures have to be re-built, etc... (the well-being of the society is taken back, of course, but economy itself, i.e levels of employment and development rise, because forces before non utilized (unemployed people, savings, etc) have to be utilized. And the disturbed status quo brings up opportunities for growth in areas stifled before by established players.

>Please read up on the "broken window fallacy."

I'm not making the same argument.

With a good such as an e-book, if you could read it and then re-sale it, then there would just be one copy sold by the parent company. If it could be resold even more, then from one original buyer you could get 10 meta-buyers, all of them not giving a penny to the author.

(And those are not pirates, in which case you wouldn't know if they would have bought it if they couldn't get it for free. Those are actual buyers).

So, in essence, the author loses 1/average_resales. That might be good for other companies and the economy in general (as per the "broken window fallacy"), but it's not for the PARTICULAR industry under discussion.

Heck, the author might be financially forced to give up writing altogether, all the while enough people to sustain him _enjoy_ and _pay_ for his book.
You have a limited amount of time to assist a customer and move onto the next so spending any time whatsoever on "challenging" customers is an enormous waste of time. This reminds me of the guy who wrote about how he always buys two of everything from Amazon and the one that comes first is the one he keeps (or some other such nonsense).

I understand that you want to get something out of this experiment. A confrontation? I don't know. From what you've said ("out of fifty-odd companies in five years...") and how you reply to them you're essentially determined to try to become a problem for someone, anyone. Have you considered that this might be a mildly sadistic behavior?
This blog post might help:
http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us-corporatio...
Nyan Cat Video in Pure CSS
NY Times: Jack Dorsey Role At Twitter Reduced
The very same. It's working really well—initially I was intimidated about the chips because of a few of the constraints the chip has in order to be as good as it is. Three challenges:

1) Figuring out how to work within the very low (but reasonable) amount of RAM each core has. They're independent computers, so each core needs to store its code and its data, all within 64 18-bit bytewords, which roughly corresponds to a tweet of information if you tweeted in UTF-8.

2) Dealing with the IDE: the IDE is attacking a problem nobody's solved: parallel compilation. That being said, it has been the second greatest challenge so far, after

3) Getting the hardware set up. My co-project-doer is light-years ahead of me in the EE department and makes most of the EE decisions, with some input from me about what capabilities the chip needs to have (a minimum amount of off-die RAM, say). Sourcing parts is something I would not have been able to do on my own, so I'd say this project requires a good deal of electronic literacy, if not dexterity.

That being said, though it's a bit of a prima-donna, it has every right and reason to be. It's an amazing, amazing chip. It's fast, powerful, unclocked, can work with all kinds of devices, is a crazy bargain both in hardware cost and in energy cost, and best of all, for me at least, an endless source of fun, hard problems. It's a fascinating chip.
> this retarded behaviour.

HN has an international audience. While the word retarded appears to be common in the US it's an offensive slur in other parts of the world; especially the UK.

Please, I'm not telling you not to use it, but I am gently asking you to consider using some other word instead.
Isn't there a telephone number? any business dealing in multiple Nxthousands of dollars should have a telephone-help-line. There's no excuse for that (confirmed customer, confirmed booking = $3,000 deal | vs x Prob (1/n)x$15/hr service rep?). Assuming there is someone on the other line available, scan a photo, layer, lock it in a psd or pdf (ie, add further security as appropriate)...send it to them, provide password over the phone, to make it visible, etc).
The message length is limited by the size of the image, you can hide (widthheight3)/16 characters. But note that your image will be resized after you have selected one.
I am going to append a field where you can see how much information can be hidden. Thanks!
You have to understand that practicing law is not influenced by VC money as much as it is software development. Since VCs (and all these new incubators) have clear preference toward younger entrepreneurs, it is logical to expect that these kind of preference will be replicated in other segments of the market.

I think that VCs and incubators have very good reason to invest in mainly younger entrepreneurs, and they probably suggest to hire "the best, regardless of age" but ....
I've always wondered, how many US citizens believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old?
That was definitely my favourite :).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresenius_(company)
>We live in sci-fi.

So were are our servant robots and flying cars?

>The only things withholding this sci-fi from happening: lack of competent workforce (programmers and roboengineers) and lack of vision.

That's too generic an accusation. One could say that about any problem.

>We could have a program writing programs, but I won't bet on that. Somebody will still have to give it orders; and the guy giving orders to a program is a programmer by definition. You will have a lot of programmers overseeing computers and robots do various tasks, and that would be the largest and busiest part of the workplace.

So, your vision of sci-fi future is conveniently constrained such that programmers are always needed and in large quantities.

Why seeing everything we currently do becoming automated as an easy task, and not also the overseeing of "computers and robots doing various tasks"? If you trust them to do the work, you can also trust them to do it correctly, and built the required self-correction routines.
> To be more efficient, I started forwarding my work email running on Google Apps to my personal email at Gmail. This is pretty common. All of the devs at my previous company handled their email this way. Why log in to two places, right?

This is a terrible practice. Work mail will be full of confidential information which shouldn't be mixed with your personal files, especially after your employment ends.
Well, a company that doesn't follow up on reports of outright employee theft - or has the kind of culture where this thing is tolerated by other, non-stealing employees one bit - has serious problems.
The first grandma with some connections they arrest for having a garage sale will be the end of it.
Don't use pay per click ads, use flat rate text ads, better results.
HN got boring.
the "not for resale" note on the cover is completely meaningless. They could also say "if you open this book you owe us 1 billion dollars" and the effect would also be the same - it would have zero ground to stand on in court.
The self-help / self-improvement literature has a default form that was established well over a century ago.

Pick up and read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Page through Eugen Sandow's Strength and How To Obtain It. Each starts with a personal biography that is in sum: once I was weak / ineffective / socially awkward, now I am not, here's my story of transformation.

It's eerie how similar contemporary works are in following the same formula.
> (msnbc.com)

Uh oh
I doubt it would be allowed by the regulators, but buying Nokia also gives you a lot of connections in places Apple does not have.
Yeah, not a big waterfall (or agile, or any other pyramid scheme) fan myself, but this kind of bullshit did get a man on the Moon and then a mixture of them got some kit on Mars, and generally they are doing OK.

Some of them can actually scan you or your friend's internal organs to see if they're alright too - that's not going to be php on a lamp stack. I'm guessing they are probably not moving fast and breaking things either. They may be taking it easy with your friends internal organs, just so they don't get sued by the growing legal community on HN.

There's also all that bizarre software that somehow delivers you to the airport of your choice. I wonder how that happens - do they have their Agile/Waterfall/Kanban/Nonsense boards on their office walls in order to get you there?
Death is dead.
I specifically tested for this when consolidating various Gmail addresses behind an Apps account, and my fix was similar: a match on * seems to include spam.

It's slightly bizarre that the email forwarding you can configure in settings would not skip all spam checks, and not even indicate as much.
I don't think the parent was claiming that Spotify would necessarily outlive the record labels, but rather some new paradigm for music recording/distribution would disrupt the label's current stranglehold.
Honest question: Will the EU commission even approve the acquisition?
I don't like every story submitted to Hacker News, but how I deal with that is visit the new page

http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

often and upvote what I like and what fits the site guidelines.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Personally, I find discussions about what HN gets right

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4399678

more interesting than complaints about what HN gets wrong.
I was pretty burnt out with my current venture too, until i built a standing desk out of $17 worth of ikea parts.
Has Apple ever made any acquisition even a portion this size? It would be a pretty big difference between Jobs Apple and Cook Apple to make a purchase this big.
Given that the likely targets would be maps and patents, the rest of the business wouldn't be of much value surely? But winding up a company Nokia's size would be a brutal hit that would inflict a lot of damage in many different areas - to Apple almost as much as Nokia I'd guess.

Edit: Auto predict. Sigh
All of the VCs I've talked to had very well-dressed and professional appearing support staff who were also highly competent. (I was curious if it was a job for people who wanted to go into other VC roles later, or a professional support track, or what, because they seemed to get much better quality staff than most other kinds of businesses. Maybe they just pay well?)

PE and "family offices" is the only place I've seen "almost exclusively young, attractive, inexperienced" support staff who were probably selected for reasons other than professional competence (attractiveness or nepotism).
Had to look that up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing
What would you rather see on an exam then? Is the entire notion of requirements/design/etc. not "agile" enough, or what?
Does anybody have a suggestion for a simple email forwarding service for random domains? e.g., if I own example.com, is there a simple way with high uptime to forward all incoming email to all addresses to an email account at a separate domain?
People who do this are really annoying and have no concepts of separating business and personal life. If you don't mix business with pleasure then why are you doing it with your e-mail? How hard is it to check two accounts or have two accounts setup on your phone? There are some lines where business and personal shouldn't cross and e-mail is one of them.

How does the appearance look? You send e-mail to foo@business.com and then funkyjizzbeats20@gmail.com replies to you! What could be more professional than that?

Also, what about security? How would people feel to know you've forwarded an e-mail they sent to a business account to your personal account? Is this just something no one thinks about?
US House Science Committee Member: Evolution Is a Lie From Hell
Developers are fortunate that our field has not been swamped by credential inflation. In other words, we don't even need a degree to do what we do. It is enough to have a portfolio of solid work and some good references, and high-paying work can come your way.

The last thing I want to see is for some kind of guild to arise, which could ultimately lock down the industry (via government requiring licensing, for instance).
I wonder if clicking "more" still leads to "unknown or expired link" in 2019...
Ask HN: make website mobile
What is the fastest way to make a website mobile compatible. Are there some neat libraries out there to do the heavy lifting for me?
Forgot the 4S vs 4 performance link: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/10/11/iphone-4s-vs-android...
Bitcoins other fatal flaw is that roughly half of all bitcoins mined thus far are held in the hands of the inventor of bitcoins and his closet buddies. They haven't been spending their bitcoins--but they're encouraging others to spend bitcoins as they are mined.

Any basis for this, or just spreading FUD?
When I was using it, not all of their services were supported, and to get into the right account I'd frequently have to log out (which logged me out of every account).

Another fun one was clicking on Google Docs links. It rarely was using the right account and allowed me to go forward. Usually got the "Please request access to this document" message.
Now we just need clickable links, and ability for readers to submit the stories behind the headlines!
Tugboat pilots make way more money than programmers, but the responsibility is much greater. You don't want to lead a tanker crashed into shore.
Will do! I only linked to the site because I kept getting an error message from tumblr. Thanks for the link
Women-led venture-backed companies more successful
Start with bootstrap. http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

It's responsive. Meaning it will resize for mobile browsers.
Apparently you didn't read my comment all that well. Re-read, and catch the "there are locations" where the article would be correct.

You are falling into the same trap as the author of the original article. Just because Denver metro (or the Valley, DC, Minneapolis or a couple of other tech/government centers) are doing well, you're extrapolating that the rest of the nation is the same. I know there are places where the beer flows like wine. I'm here to tell you in many--if not most--places where I roam (primarily in the midwest), that is not the case.

Ageism is a serious concern, along with companies doing what they can to lower "human capital" costs while still extracting as much work as possible. Infrastructure is somewhat immune to this, as well as smaller towns (25-50K and smaller, some distance away from larger metros) where they can't retain or recruit younger workers as easily.

As for being fed bad information, you haven't seen the look on friends' faces who've remained in tech when they talk about their concerns and experiences. 10-20% paycuts 3-4 years ago which have not bounced back. Two different companies recently resetting position titles from "Senior Position" to "Position II" for those with 15-20 years experience. Watching any open positions be filled with H-1Bs, college interns or recent grads at intern salaries. Hearing about apparent tech Nirvanas in other metros, and being unable to leave because they'd uproot their family.

The look on their faces may not be fear for their future, but it is a deep concern/worry.
The worries of parenting with technology
Doctors and lawyers are often small business owners when they have their own practices. Their incomes are more on par with small business owners.
Urban Zombie (AR zombie game) coming to infected area near you
From Responsive Design[1] to jQuery Mobile[2] you really have a lot of options. Depending on your wants/needs you will find that each has its own benefits and downfalls.

There was also a good discussion recently about Responsive Design[3]

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

[2] - http://jquerymobile.com/

[3] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4570193
The worst is their abysmal "On Behalf of:" handling when sending as an @gmail.com address from another @gmail.com address. There is no way around having your "main" email end up in plaintext in the header of every email you send as the "anonymous" email. And anyone replying to you via Outlook replies to the main address. You can send as @yahoo or @hotmail addresses with no evidence of your main gmail account, but for some reason they don't let you with a second gmail address.
Yeah. Kies is slow as hell (more than iTunes on windows.. it says a lot, because iTunes on windows is not a shiny example of good software.) and TouchWiz is slowing down Android, sometimes destroying the battery and is otherwise a design sin, it's far more uglier than the stock UI, it's got better recently (S3, Note 10.1 etc.) but it still has some badly copied parts from iOS that doesn't really match Android's aesthetics, like the custom keyboard. The Samsung keyboard has an identical color scheme to iOS's virtual keyboards, it looks good on iOS because the rest of the interface is similar but it feels like total shit on Android and really it just proves that Samsung actually deserved to get bitchslapped in the courts by Apple because even an Android fan like myself could find too many similarities between what Samsung did to Android (it was worse for past devices) and iOS. Stock Android doesn't look like iOS, but TouchzWiz used to, and some parts of TouchWiz still do to this day (like the keyboard I mentioned).

I love Android, and I like some of Samsung's hardware but I wish they'd shut their whole software division down and just put stock android on their phones and tablets. Stop writing code, and stop designing your custom UI, because you SUCK at this job.
I do notice waves with the HN frontpage, some times there's more interesting stuff and sometimes it's all a bit boring.

I agree for the past day or two I've found things a bit boring but I totally expect a wave of really cool stuff soon, which has happened many times in the past.
Thank you for this, seriously. It made my day (and i already have copies printed out and plastered).

Big +1
The best part is, they can't even oust Pincus to try something new, can they? He has a controlling share.

Be cool if Fred Wilson, or another one of the early investors, would make an appearance to explain why the hell they thought dumping this on the public was a smart and/or credible thing to do:

"Look at the list of the Zynga insiders who cashed out this quarter to the tune of $516 million, it’s chock full of A-list investors like Fred Wilson, Reid Hoffman and Silver Lake Partners. So the narrative right now is “The insiders dumped that stock at the exact right time.” I want to flip that and say “The VC’s have sent you a term sheet for an investment.” Consider the rationale for fiduciaries like Fred Wilson, who turned a $5 million investment in Zynga into almost $400 million."

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2012/07/26/the-venture-cap...

Next time someone brings up Wall Street, they need to take a step back and realize this behaviour is happening in their own back yard.
I'm not sure if this is HN material, but anyway: This is terrifying. As someone who doesn't live in the US and enjoys a secular government, this is like culture shock, even more so because this person is supposed to be a (medical) doctor, and is legally in charge of "Science, Space and Technology".

Aren't there any IQ/education requirements for a committee handling IQ and education?
It seems to be silly to think this is only a phenomena in China. In the West we have 'doxing'.

That said, this sort of thing is what Internet activists always cite as being what a free internet can do for the world. Citizens can hold their officials accountable by combining their efforts to dig. It is much harder to arrest 10 people in somewhat geographically diverse regions than it is to find one activist.
Oh, how I am yearning for the inclusion of a "Discussion of Language Design As If Ruby and Python Were The Only Two Languages Ever Made" article followed by some article with a snarky title about Java and C++ devs quietly making hillariously large stacks of cash and ignoring new languages. :D
Not last weekend, last 15 mins :)
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4621538
Adwords: I Mastered It - Then Got Banned
This is typical of the "Get it out the door ASAP" culture with many startups. Yes you can't spend years indulging in perfecting every area of your system but don't release a pile of junk written in a scripting language that you learnt in the last few months. Software is a product and it's worth spending extra time to make it well engineered.
Are you able to boot all the cores and get them functional? I like the design of these chips too, especially how each core "blocks" on its message queue by instantly going to sleep, taking zero power -- and then instantly wakes up the moment a message appears.
The volume of small, incremental, changes in law is higher. Let me put it this way. The Dodd-Frank regulations that have come out so far in the last two years is probably the same number of pages, printed 50 lines per page, as the C++ source for Oracle's Hotspot JVM. And it's only 30% done. And there is no ChangeLog.

The pace of paradigm shifts is indeed much faster in technology, but I disagree there are major paradigm shifts in technology every 10 years. There are major developments within specific scientific domains like AI, image recognition, etc, but in software engineering itself there is little new under the sun. There is nothing in Javascript that wasn't done better in Smalltalk 30 years ago. CoffeeScript, C#, Lua, Ruby, etc? Derivative stuff that any Lisp-er plucked out of 1985 could pick up in a week or two.
There are writers who write novels, and there are writers who write textbooks. While the end results look a lot alike. Both have covers, both have words, both convey concepts, the purpose of the books is completely different. As such, the methodology for writing the book is different. There might even be some commonalities between the two. You might do fact checking between the two... but the facts matter a lot more in a textbook, then a novel. While you actually can use the same process a group of professors use to develop a textbook to write your novel, it doesn't make sense to use the same process a novel writer might use to develop a textbook. To do so would be potentially irresponsible to the students who consume the textbook.